What I learned: Don't fix things yourself (1 Viewer)

[Hunter P]

I was doing a load of laundry and noticed that the water was trickling down slowly into the basin. In fact, some of the water was dripping down onto the floor. I checked the hoses and they were not leaking. I live with my bro and told him the problem and he said he noticed it too when he did a load earlier. So I thought, "Damn now I have to pay for a repair man."

Anyways, I go back to the washer (which I left running) to check on the model. I lift up the lid and notice what looks like a string or long piece of rubber hanging out the water spout. I think, "Hmmm. Maybe a part came loose in the washer and is blocking the water way."

So I tug on the string to pull it out. After pulling it out a bit, I see that it is attached to two legs. It was then that I realized that a mouse had crawled up into the washer and drowned from a previous wash. Soon after this realization I also realized that I just touched the tail of a dead mouse with my bare hands.

I immediately went to the sink to wash and scrub my fingers. I used dishwashing soap, SOS, Clorox, and anything else I found. I just could not get the "feel" of the mouse's tail off of my fingers. It lingered there. Minutes later, I could still feel the texture of the tail as it slid through my fingers as the body of the mouse caught on the opening of the water spout.

After squirming around the kitchen like a 6 year old girl for a few more moments, I put on some rubber gloves and pulled the mouse the rest of the way out. Needless to say, I let the washer go through a cycle before washing my clothes in it again.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

Good thing you don't live on a farm. Dead mice are child's play compared to some of the rather gross things you'll find around here.

 

[Hunter P]

Yeah, I'm totally "sissy-fied." When I was a kid, I was a regular Huckleberry Finn. I caught all kinds of critters with my bare hands: lizards, toads, tadpoles, snakes, and even water scorpions.

Now as an adult, I am a total wuss.:b There I said it.

 

[Paul McElligott]

It's just a dead mouse. Get over it.

 

[Mort Corey]

Did it fix the leak ?

Mort

 

[Ted Lee]

i hear lye works really well ...

waits for someone to come in with a silica reference....

 

[Jay H]

Oh, good thing Jeff said farm, I was thinking much worse, like an abortion clinic or the morgue...



The only mice we caught was in a mouse trap once when we found mouse droppings under the kitchen sink once in the house I grew up in... Some peanut butter, a mouse trap and one dead mouse later...

Jay

 

[Hunter P]

Seeing a mouse I can handle. Picking up a dead one in a trap I can handle. Touching one and rubbing it, not so much.

And for all of you who wanna deny their sissy side, let me toss in a dead mouse in your laundry like fabric softener and see if your Fruit-of-the-Looms feel the same way again.

 

[Citizen87645]

I think the shock factor plays in big here. It's like when I was a kid I thought there was a peanut on the ground and turns out it was a cat turd. Scarred me for life.

 

[Bryan X]

I agree. If I saw a dead mouse on the floor I *might&* be able to pick it up by the tail with my bare hands. But if I tugged on what I thought was a piece of rubber only to see it was a mouse, I'd probably jump through the roof.

 

[Todd Hochard]

We had one of these crawl out from under our dryer (in the basement) when I was kid-
http://www.dgif.state.va.us/wildlife...s/030016-3.jpg

Total of six, in fact (five babies). My Mom insisted that EVERYTHING in the basement be set up on blocks. This occurred in 1985, and the blocks are still there.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Can I admit that I jumped when the picture at Todd's link showed up on screen?!

And they don't even usually bother me!

There was the time I was doing our laundry after a stay at my parents' camp in the woods. I was pulling the sheets and clothing out of the washer and moving them into the dryer when I dropped something I though was a sock. It turned out to be a dead bat! I've dealt with bats in the house any number of times...but something about having it in your laundry is weird!

Great story, Hunter. I understand exactly how you felt!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

What you need is Fluffy Pumpkin around the house.

He is fearless but not that hungry. On more than one occasion I have found HALF of a dead rat in the backyard. The rear half - with tail. I guess he only likes the head and upper body......

 

[Mike Frezon]

I think that can be said about a lot of men.

 

[Lynda-Marie]

My mother had the worst time with mice of anyone I ever met. She might have had a heart attack if she had faced what you did, Hunter P.

I was sitting on the couch reading, when mom came into the living room and started in on me about the Halloween candy in the junk drawer I had just devoured. It was July, I didn't think that candy was still good; I had not touched it.

That did not seem to convince her, however. "I don't care if you eat it, but for God's sake, at least take the wrapper off when you do, or at least throw it away!"

Protests of innocence did not avail me, and I was rather upset with the unjust chewing out.

A couple hours later, mom came outside to apologize profusely. It seems she had gone back to that drawer to get something else, and found several other candy bars that had been chewed up, in the wrapper. She said she had been building up a good head of steam to come out and paddle my behind when she noticed that some little bars of soap had likewise been chewed up, and so had some magazines. She said she was wondering about what kind of weird cravings I was having, when she took a closer look at the candy and the soap, realized that my teeth were much bigger.

The clincher was the collection of "souvenirs" that fortunately, she did not mistake for beads from my beading supplies.

The whole house smelled like Pine Sol and bleach for the next several days as she emptied out ALL of the cupboards and drawers, and gave them the sanitizing of their lives. She also proceeded to set traps in the strangest places, and poisoned bait.

It might have been this incident, more than anything else, that prompted her to convince my dad to give me a cat for Christmas.

*********************************

Three years later, mom came thundering up the stairs, just about hysterical, hollering about a mouse she had seen running through the basement. My dad made the most stupid comment I ever heard, "It was just your imagination."

Dad was the one whose wrath shook the rafters in our house, but mom was much more ominous as she smiled sweetly and replied, "Whatever you say, dear."

She went out the next day and bought some traps, which she baited and placed strategically all over the basement. My dad could not stop laughing about it.

Two weeks later, he came home from work, and there, on a TV tray, sat his favorite meal, steaming hot, with a nice, cold brew sitting next to it. Mom came into the living room, threw her arms around him, kissed him on the lips and said, ever so sweetly, "Good evening, dear. Would you be so kind as to go downstairs and remove my IMAGINATION from the mousetrap? Thank you."

I was in my room, and heard him stomping downstairs, cussing under his breath. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to giggle into a pillow.

 

[Lynda-Marie]

P.S. Guo, I hate to make the gross situation worse, but were you scarred for life by your little encounter because you tasted it?

[I wish I could get Hunter P.'s little barf smilie!]

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

I have discovered that I share a psychic connection with mice, it must be from having raised them as a kid.

It seems that every time I catch a mouse around here (live traps), I am woken from my slumbers, which inevitably leads me to discover my new prisoner. This happened again the other day, but it wasn't the first time, and it's certainly not because I can hear them, as they can be anywhere in the house, one of the prices I pay for living in the country.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Then you need to meet my mother, she makes yours look tame. My mom is afraid of pictures of mice. She can't stand to see a mouse or a rat in a magazine or on television. (She turns away from the opening credits of Monk, or fast-forwards through them when playing it back on TiVo - and it's one of her favorite shows.)

Regards,

Joe

 

[Joey Skinner]

I'm a rural mail carrier. A couple of months ago I opened a mail box and inside was a decomposing armadillo. I screamed like a school girl and quickly drove off, leaving the door to the box open. Now if this had been MY box I would've taken a chainsaw, cut it down and burned it. The next day the lid was closed so I opened it and the carcass was still there. On the third day someone removed the armadillo and threw it on the ground behind the mailbox. The inside of the mailbox was not hosed out or cleaned in any way. I put their mail in the box on top of the debris and insects and they have been picking it up ever since. Disgusting but true.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

That's not too bad. My Albany residence is set aside on its own five acres and we've had several problems with critters in our house. The worst was when a possum got stuck in the washer/dryer tube, got chopped up, then was discovered to be still alive when my dad was trying to pound it out.